1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a control system for managing users' entrance into and exit from a specific area and a method for controlling the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, as wireless communication technology including wireless local area networks (LANs) based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 has been developed, wired communication systems have been increasingly replaced with wireless communication systems in, for example, the home or office environment.
Moreover, in addition to the replacement of wired communication with wireless communication, short-range wireless communication methods, such as near field communication (NFC), have become increasingly popular. Devices that have an NFC function can communicate with each other by merely being brought close to one another. Thus, NFC is used for, for example, payment or access to various types of service. Moreover, wireless communication is used, for example, when key information that is required by a user to view a pay-per-view broadcast or data that is distributed when the user passes through a ticket gate is stored in an integrated circuit (IC) card, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-032519.
In these situations, it is anticipated that wireless communication, such as wireless LANs or NFC, will become increasingly available, resulting in various types of devices performing wireless communication in various environments, with users increasingly using such devices.
In an environment in which many types of devices communicate wirelessly and these communications occur in various situations, these devices need to be set to support wireless communication so that these devices can readily wirelessly communicate in any situation. For example, when the same notebook personal computer (PC) is used at home and in an office, the notebook PC needs to connect to different access points that operate in the individual environments. Thus, parameters of the individual access points such as extended service set identifiers (ESSIDs), encryption methods, encryption keys, etc., need to be appropriately set.
Accordingly, in an environment in which wireless communication is widely available, settings related to wireless communication need to be readily and appropriately performed in order to quickly and efficiently set devices so that the devices can begin to wirelessly communicate.
A significant number of parameters, such as communication mode, encryption method, authentication method, encryption key, etc. are required for wireless communication. Typically, it becomes very cumbersome for a user to manually input the various parameters required for wireless communication into a device. In many cases, the user ends up erroneously setting one or more of the parameters.
In cases where devices support wireless communication, but have little or input interfaces, such as digital cameras and printers, it is either increasingly cumbersome for the user to set the parameters or the user can not set them at all.